


#0090417 - Empty World

by maxigolds



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Original Statement (The Magnus Archives), Season 1 Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Sensory Overload, Statement Fic (The Magnus Archives), The Buried Fear Entity (The Magnus Archives), The Lonely Fear Domain (The Magnus Archives), The Lonely Fear Entity (The Magnus Archives), canon typical spookiness, does this count as a vent fic?, vent fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-27
Updated: 2020-11-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:08:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27744997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maxigolds/pseuds/maxigolds
Summary: Statement of Clara Richards regarding the disappearance of everyone on Earth over an unknown period of time. Original statement given April 17th 2009. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.Statement begins.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	#0090417 - Empty World

**[ CLICK ]**

**ARCHIVIST**

Statement of Clara Richards regarding the disappearance of everyone on Earth over an unknown period of time. Original statement given April 17th 2009. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.

Statement begins.

**ARCHIVIST (STATEMENT)**

I’m sorry about the headphones. I’m not actually using them to listen to music, you see, it’s just that I really can’t stand noise anymore and while these aren’t a perfect solution, they do help a bit, at least. Everything is just so loud. It’s sort of funny; you don’t really notice just how much noise everything and everyone makes, so constantly, until you get used to that utter, blissful silence.

Sorry, I suppose I should start at the beginning. I don’t know what caused it - everyone to disappear, I mean. It’s not like I had done anything different recently. I hadn’t bought anything new, hadn’t opened any old wooden chests, hadn’t stepped in any god damn fairy rings, it just happened out of nowhere. I just woke up that morning on the fifth of April, 2009, and I’m absolutely certain that nothing felt out of the ordinary. I keep thinking back to it, trying to see if I remember anything else, but the one thing that I’m sure of is that nothing felt off.

I don’t know what time it was when I woke up because, when I looked over, I noticed that my alarm clock had stopped working at 03:18, the screen just blinking on the same number, and it was definitely too bright outside to be that early. I’m certain I remember the date correctly, however, because I know I had a doctor's appointment that day, and my Nan promised she’d go with me.

I live with my grandparents, you see. Well- I live with my Nan, to be exact. My grandad died in November, and mum wanted to make sure someone was in the house to take care of her, and my Nan’s house is actually closer to my school, so I just kind of ended up moving into the spare bedroom. Plus it kept me and my brother from arguing all the time, so that was a bonus. Nan seemed to appreciate it, even if I didn’t really end up doing much around the house, but I was there and I was company, and she certainly had no complaints about having someone bring her cups of tea every few hours.

Either way, I just guessed that maybe there had been a power cut last night, and there was nothing to worry about. Even if my alarm clock wasn’t working, there was no reason why all the regular clocks wouldn’t be, and, worse case scenario, I’d just be walking to the doctor’s by myself while Nan got someone in to fix the electric. My alarm clock always needed to be reset if it got switched off or unplugged accidentally, so that was nothing strange.

Except then I noticed something: Nan hadn’t brought me a cup of tea yet. It was a Sunday, and on a Sunday, I usually found myself waking up to my Nana bringing me a cup of tea around ten in the morning, because lord knows that I don’t wake up earlier than that on a weekend. She’s good like that, my Nan, it’s our little routine, and I like to stick to my routine. But I just figured, hey, maybe I work up earlier than ten for once. Not completely unusual. I’d gone to bed early, so maybe I’d just gotten enough sleep. I decided I’d just get up and get breakfast and make my own cup of tea instead.

It was as I was getting up that I finally noticed it: the house was completely silent. There was no hum of electricity, no ticking of the clock, there was nothing even coming from outside. I like to sleep with my window open, you see, and it’s not unusual for me to be rudely awoken by a barking dog or someone mowing their lawn at the crack of dawn, but not even the birds were chirping. It was weird, but not enough to cause concern, and I just ended up shrugging it off for now and heading to the kitchen to get cereal. I did notice that the milk was a bit warm when I got it out the fridge, so the electric had shut off at some point, but it hadn’t actually registered until I went to turn the kettle on and found it wasn’t working, but it wasn’t like there was anything I could do about it. If the electric had shut off around 3am like my alarm clock had suggested, then Nan had probably already tried the breakers, and there wasn’t really anything more that I could do than that. So I just sat at the kitchen counter in silence and ate my cereal. The crunch of it was deafening in a way that made my jaw ache, but I finished my bowl anyway and just left it by the sink for later. 

I’ll be honest, I don’t know what I was thinking at the time, really. I seemed so sure that nothing was wrong, and that going about my normal routine would be just fine. Looking back, even now, I don’t think I would have done it any differently. It was so long ago, I can hardly remember. Heh. Sorry. That must sound weird- to you, this was barely two weeks ago, but to me? Well. I’m sure I was in that place for months. Maybe years.

I’m not quite sure when I noticed that my Nan wasn’t there. At some point I’d realised that it had turned eleven, and I went out in the garden to see if I could find her. It was deathly silent. The wind was still blowing through the trees, but there was no other noise than that. No cars on the road, no dogs barking or birds singing, there weren't even any insects. Nothing aside from that dull, calming roar of the weather. Usually, this time of year, there are more bees buzzing around the lavender than I can count, but now? There was nothing. Not a single one. I was definitely feeling a bit strange by that point. Not uncomfortable or scared, more so that I’d noticed that something was definitely off. It shouldn’t have been that quiet and I knew it, but I didn’t want to jump to conclusions and cause myself to panic.

I ended up deciding to just get dressed and go to my doctor’s appointment by myself anyway. If Nan had just gone out to the shops or a neighbours house or something, then there was no reason for me to cause a panic and be late for my check up. I didn’t see a single person on my twenty minute walk into town. There were cars on the road, sure, but they were all parked. None of them were crashed or crooked or anything, like people had vanished in the middle of driving, they were simply all neatly lined up along the pavement like usual, all cold and empty and exactly where they had been left the night before.

The doctor’s office was completely deserted when I arrived, the door was locked shut and all the lights turned off inside. I couldn’t see anyone in the reception as I looked in through the glass door, or in any of the other surrounding shops in town. I spent about ten minutes wandering about, trying to see if I could find anyone, but I don’t remember feeling rushed or panicked. Even if there had been some sort of evacuation order that I’d somehow missed, that didn’t explain the missing birds or insects, so it had to be some other reason that there was no one about.

It wasn’t until I walked into the park, that wide, open green field, that it really hit me. The fact of it was that I was completely and utterly alone. I wasn’t sure if it was just the town, or all of England, or if everyone on earth had simply up and vanished, but I remember exactly how I felt when I finally realised it, and I felt blissful. It was so quiet. So calm and peaceful and it was fantastic. There was no noise of people, of animals or children, no cars or airplanes or screaming construction work, there wasn’t even that constant hum of electricity anymore, and it was incredible.

I’m not sure how long I spent in that place. I never really bothered to count the days, but I know it was a long time, and if I had to guess, I would say anywhere from six months to a year, possibly even longer than that. Clocks still worked, I still ate and slept, and the sun still rose and set, but I didn’t age. I had dyed my hair only days before so I would have noticed immediately if my hair had grown any longer. I ended up travelling, sort of. I don’t know how to drive and I wasn’t about to teach myself, so I ended up with a bike and a backpack and - you know one of those little trailing carts you attach to your bike for a dog or a child to sit in? Yeah, I found one of those. I used it to store cans and water and stuff.

I broke into a lot of houses, as you can imagine, but I always tried to be respectful. I slept in beds, but I always tidied up before I left and only took what I needed. I don’t think I went very far, really, but everything seems so much farther apart when you’re only travelling by bike or on foot. I stayed in London for maybe a couple weeks before heading up into the rolling greens of the countryside. Even with no one else there, I still couldn’t stand the city. I’m not sure where I ended up exactly, but it was nice. A little village where I picked out a mostly empty house - I think it had only been built recently, or maybe it was a summer home, as there weren’t any photos on the walls or indication to who might have lived there - and I made it mine. I learned to forage and grow my own food, even if I did still end up living off canned stuff for most of it, but I didn’t mind. I taught myself to knit and sew and so many things. I still know how- I’m not very good, but I definitely didn’t know how to knit before this all happened. I seem to have lost the muscle memory of it, which makes sense, I suppose.

I didn’t really miss my family in that empty place. I think I missed the idea of them more than anything. Like when you miss a book that you really liked as a kid, only to go back and read it again, but you realise that nostalgia has clouded your mind and that it wasn’t really that good in the first place, even if you still like it. I had photos of them, and that was really all that I needed. I actually ended up taking the photos down at some point, but I still kept them. I had them in my memory, and being able to see other people’s faces, even in photos, just ruined things for me. I was enjoying being alone. I had never been truly alone before, not until that point, and it was the best thing I had ever experienced.

I’m not sure what I did to ruin it. I would have happily spent the rest of my life in that empty world, if that was possible, if I could even die there. But, no, one day I went to sleep like normal and woke up to the roar of a lawn mower outside, and the noise was suffocating. I clamped my hands down over my ears, but the noise still got through, this deafening, overpowering sound that made my head split open in pain at the suddenness of it. I hadn’t even noticed that I was back in my old room at my Nan’s house until I scrambled up to slam the window shut, but it didn’t help. That echoing, beastly cry slipped in through the cracks and ate away at me, filling me with that terrible sound. I wanted to scream. I just ended up curling up into a ball on my bed, pillows held over my ears, crying silently until my Nan came to bring me my cup of tea and found me there. It was strange. I hadn’t seen her in so long. I hadn’t seen anyone in so long, and all I could feel was this intense wave of discomfort as she touched me to try and comfort me, and I think I ended up telling her to go away because she eventually just left. I didn’t go to the doctors that day.

I hadn’t realised how loud everyday life was until I’d gotten so used to the silence of an empty world. Now I just have a constant headache and can barely stand to be in the same room with even a single person. To hear the presence of another person, even to have to listen to their silent breaths makes me boil with a rage I cannot explain. I want to go back to that emptiness, to that beautiful silence. Everything is too loud and too much and it is suffocating. I feel like I can barely breathe in the noise of it all. I just want to go back. Please. I’m begging you. Help me go back.

**ARCHIVIST**

Statement ends.

Well. This is another one of those statements that I can very easily pass off as entirely false, although I’m more inclined to pass this off as something of a lucid nightmare rather than drugs, if only because our statement giver was barely seventeen at the time this was given.

Follow up on this statement was initially difficult, but once we found out that Clara Richards had legally changed his name to Max Richards in 2011, we were easily able to locate him. Since his grandmother died and left him a large chunk of inheritance, he apparently moved up to Dartmoor in Devon, and bought a small cottage and large amount of land surrounding it. Martin said that he, although pleasant enough, seemed annoyed that we’d found him, but let Martin ask him a few questions anyway. Martin also noted that Max refused to let him speak, instead making him write all his questions down on paper, to which he also answered by writing it down on paper. Said paper will be included with the statement. Max had nothing to add to his statement, although still insisted that it happened.

He apparently grows almost all of his own food, and anything he can’t grow or make, he gets delivered, and that he also sells any excess produce and baked goods to a shop in town. Martin even brought back some vegan strawberry pies for us, which was, admittedly, very kind of him.

One thing Sasha found is that, barely a month after giving this statement, the (at the time) Clara Richards was admitted to hospital, when he was found by his grandmother, after having reportedly attempted to deafen himself. The record doesn’t mention how, exactly, he attempted to do this, other than the use of a “sharp object”. However, I can’t help but imagine that he succeeded.

Recording ends.

**[ CLICK ]**


End file.
